


Phoenix of the Pyrrhic Pyre

by decepticontrashparty



Series: Legacy of the Arena [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-25 02:03:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20716289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decepticontrashparty/pseuds/decepticontrashparty
Summary: Overlord had been obsessed with Megatron ever since their gladiator days, ever since Megatron became the only mech to ever defeat him - and claim the horrific prize of victory the arena demanded. After capturing him on the Necrobot's planet, Overlord finally had the chance to carry out every horror his depraved imagination had come up with over the years. Finally though, rescue came. Recovery is less easily assured.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to 'To The Victor The Spoils', but I intend to try and write this so that fic doesn't necessarily have to be read in order to understand this one. If folks just want to read a recovery h/c fic, then they can just skip over allll of that.

Ratchet had been told very little about the situation. Rodimus had found him, shouted that Megatron was still alive, captured by the DJD, that Rodimus was going to go and rescue him with Brainstorm’s help and that Megatron was almost certainly going to need medical attention afterwards, and disappeared again. Ratchet had been left with his processor whirling as he tried to compute the meaning of all of that, before ruthlessly suppressing his confusion and getting on with preparing for the worst. 

The Justice Division had Megatron. To be more precise, they’d had him for three megacycles now, ever since their sudden departure from the Necrobot’s planet in a display of uncharacteristic mercy. The only reason for doing so that anyone could see was that they had achieved their objective in coming here, which had been Megatron’s death. Capturing him instead hadn’t seemed to be on the cards, although perhaps one of the  _ Lost Light _ ’s crew ought to have thought about the possibility. Ratchet started to lay out his tools in the medbay with grim determination. Capture could not be worse than offlining in his mind, simply because snuffing a spark was something final and irrevocable. It could not be undone. However, that certainly didn’t change the fact that there was a very long list of utterly terrible things that could be done to someone, and Tarn and his cronies had no scruples about carrying out any of them. 

Mechs would not usually ever call Ratchet an optimist, and he wouldn’t say that about himself either, but there was one area where an ember of hope did still live in his spark. With the long, long lives of the Cybertronian species, recovery was always possible. He truly did believe that. Whatever had been done to someone, whatever the trauma written into their processor, they could come back from it. They could heal. 

If he  _ didn’t _ believe that… 

Well. After four million years and change of war, all Cybertronian medics still functioning had learned what beliefs they needed to hold on to to stay sane. 

There. Everything was ready. Ratchet took a step back and ran through a brief programme designed to limber up the many small joints in his servos. A familiar almost-ritual. He did not know how long he would be waiting. That was familiar too. The tense, dragging moments while a battle still raged, before the first casualties started arriving, when there was no way to tell how bad things might get. He knew how this worked. He knew how to function under these conditions. That should, perhaps, have bothered him more than it did. 

Half a cycle later, the door to the medbay slid open. Ratchet was at attention immediately, focusing in on his patient. Rodimus and Brainstorm staggered through with Megatron’s limp weight slung over their shoulders, his pedes dragging along the ground. Ratchet gestured towards the medical slab with a jerk of his helm, optics cycling through a visual scan of the damage as he unspooled his diagnostic cable for a deeper systems scan as well. 

As he’d imagined, it wasn’t good. There were thin lines of damage all over the front of Megatron’s plating, the narrow cuts of a plasma whip - he remembered that kind of injury from a very long time ago, from his clinic in the Dead End. At least these wounds were far from the worst that particular weapon could do. Black charring singed the edges of many of Megatron’s armour plates as well, suggesting circuit damage underneath. Impossible to tell how severe without linking up. Ratchet’s assessing gaze drifted lower, and saw the missing modesty panel. 

He bit back a curse. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, and yet it was. Something about Megatron made the idea that he could be assaulted in such a way difficult to contemplate. You could imagine him stoic under torture, and it was not as though the Autobots had never managed to capture him for brief periods during the war, but… but… this was different.

Ratchet forced the emotion out of his processor. He was a professional, Primus damn it! He had a patient in front of him, and a job to do. His clinical assessment was not finished. 

As he helped Rodimus and Brainstorm maneuver Megatron up onto the berth, he did his best to catalogue the numerous traces of scraped-bare paint on Megatron’s frame - usually a sure sign of where paint transfers had been cleaned away recently. Nanites took a while to recolonise such areas. There were a lot. Mostly clustered around his hips and thighs, but around his helm and jawline too. Ratchet reached to pop open one of his medical ports, wondering how much internal damage he was about to find. 

At least Megatron was in stasis. At least they weren’t going through this with him conscious and fighting them. Ratchet might have left the  _ Lost Light _ to look for Drift a while back, but he had spent enough time with Megatron as one of their Captains to get to know him. It had only confirmed his ideas of him as stubborn and fiercely closed off. Ratchet had dealt with survivors of rape before. It had been a long war, and an ugly one. He had seen all manner of responses, including the kind he imagined Megatron would have. Pretend it never happened. Pretend everything was just fine. Deny that anyone ever made you feel weak. 

Yeah, that wasn’t going to work. Wasn’t healthy either, for that matter. 

Ratchet pushed gently into Megatron’s systems, bringing up his own frame’s internal diagnostics, skimming over damage reports, error messages, and - to his interest - the stubs of recent activity from someone with medic protocols. That stab of curiosity swiftly led on to yet more horror however when he read into the specifics of that activity.  _ Someone _ had been operating on Megatron without bothering to turn off his pain sensors. He might think it was incompetence if only the rest of their work wasn’t perfectly well done. 

There had been repairs to Megatron’s valve and intake mesh, to what had been a severely damaged knee joint, and also a full replacement of most of his dorsal plating. Ratchet had seen that the plating was new during his visual scan, but he hadn’t consciously realised it at the time - simply because he hadn’t thought that Tarn had access to a medic anymore with Pharma gone. 

A foolish assumption. Given what the DJD got up to, naturally one of Tarn’s first priorities would have been to locate a replacement. 

Ratchet scrolled back through Megatron’s internal logs to find out what had necessitated the refit, and could not hold back a wince.  _ There _ was the rest of the plasma whip damage. The horrid, maiming damage that he had once seen leave mechs half-way to the Allspark. It would have been agonising, and replacing the armour with pain sensors still active just as much so. 

He couldn’t do anything about that now. He could only focus on what  _ could _ be fixed. 

Ratchet brought up Megatron’s current frame diagnostics, seeking out ongoing damage reports and error messages. As he’d thought, his circuitry was a mess. Electrocution seemed the most likely culprit, more than any mech’s systems could handle. It was severe enough to cause minor spasms, mild motor and sensory errors, an aching pain throughout the frame, but nothing that overly threatened function. Nothing the DJD would have bothered to fix, he imagined. Replacing the most damaged areas would not be a simple surgery, but thankfully he had the parts. The Necrobot had kept his fortress well stocked - something to do with all the wounded mechs he had rescued through time. 

What else? There was less valve damage than he had worried there would be. That, and Megatron’s intake, had been patched up competently, and self-repair would integrate those repairs with time. The various small wounds over Megatron’s front weren’t serious, but ran the risk of rust infection or poor healing if he left them - easy to fill them in. Energon levels were very low - another easy fix. Now  _ there _ was something a little odd - signs of heat damage along his backstrut. How had that gotten there? 

It didn’t matter. He could get that while he was working on Megatron’s circuits. That was by far the worst of the damage he could find here. 

The worst  _ physical  _ damage. When Megatron could be brought out of stasis, when he woke up, then they would see the rest of it. Ratchet couldn’t imagine it was going to be pretty, and there wasn’t that much  _ he _ could do about it either. 

Did Rung know about any of this yet?

Ratchet looked up from the med-slab, to see Rodimus and Brainstorm still clustered close around him. “Well Doc?” Rodimus asked. “Is he gonna be okay?”

“Physically, sure,” Ratchet replied. It wasn’t the easy answer Rodimus was looking for, but Ratchet suspected he already knew there was no easy answer to that question. “So long as you two get out of my way and let me work. Go tell the others the good news or something, why don’t you?” 

Rodimus nodded, and they left. Ratchet selected the first of his tools, and began what was sure to be a long operation. Focusing on his job made it easier not to think about everything that would come next.

\----

Ravage paced, tail lashing. His processor had been whirling and unsettled since Rodimus had informed him that Megatron was still alive - but had refused to say  _ how _ he knew this. Ravage was tempted to disbelieve him, to think this nothing more than some Autobot trick designed to hurt him, but it was simply too cruel. He had been on board their ship long enough to get the measure of these bots, and the ones trapped here were not malicious in that way.

The news had been both a shock and a relief - of a sort, given the circumstances. Things between Ravage and Megatron might be complicated these days, but he was still the mech who had been their leader for millions of years. He still  _ cared _ about him. Ravage had been working hard to try and understand why Megatron had made the choices he had made recently. His hurt at betrayal - the same he shared with Soundwave - had been tempered by seeing that Megatron honestly appeared to be happier now than he had been for… a very long time. 

And then the mutiny. And then Tarn. And then this  _ utterly foolish _ decision to go out and meet with him alone. 

Megatron hadn’t come back. Tarn’s forces had left. Given that, and given the deep, obsession turned hate Tarn held for Megatron, it had seemed to be… obvious. That he was dead. Ravage had gone out in the aftermath tracking Megatron’s scent, and found signs of battle in a wide field of blue flowers, ringed around the base of Megatron’s own statue. Various scents mingled there, Megatron, Tarn,  _ Overlord _ \- a nasty surprise. Energon was soaked into the ground, a lot of it. Enough that Ravage had accepted Megatron’s death, despite the lack of a greyed out frame anywhere to be seen. 

He hadn’t thought about capture. Why was that? 

Had the possibility been so terrible that he hadn’t  _ wanted _ to think of it?

Rodimus had sounded absolutely certain that Megatron was alive. That meant he had some kind of proof. Ravage had been thinking about what it might be. If there had been any physical trace he would have found it himself on the battlefield. So it was less tangible. A message from offworld? Some kind of transmission? Methods of communication from the Necrobot’s world were limited. There was only one comms console, and Ravage was not sure how many of their number might have had personal datapads or other devices on them when they were marooned here. 

Rodimus was the kind of mech who never liked to be long separated from some form of entertainment. He probably  _ did  _ have a datapad, which meant access to the Galactic Interlink. He had seen something there. 

Ravage turned, claws digging into the floor. Rodimus had refused to show him whatever it was for a reason. He was neither a fool nor an innocent. He knew what Tarn and the others were capable of. Could this transmission really be worse than all the possibilities his processor was throwing up right now? Did he even really  _ want _ to see it?

Rodimus had a plan. He hadn’t said much about  _ that _ either. Perhaps in case it didn’t work. Fine. Ravage could be patient. He was  _ good _ at being patient - usually. 

And if Rodimus failed? 

Ravage had fully intended to seek revenge before this. That desire, that  _ need,  _ was all the greater now. Tarn would pay. 

If Rodimus succeeded, and Megatron was rescued…? Then Ravage would help him in whatever way he needed. Including getting revenge, if Tarn still lived.

\----

Megatron rose up out of a haze of feeling nothing at all, expecting the rude awakening of pain. When it failed to make its appearance he should have felt relieved, but he was unable to trust the sensation. He should not have been waking up at all. If his last gambit had worked...

He was not dead - unless everything he had believed was wrong, and there really  _ was _ an Afterspark. So then if he was at ease, if he had been repaired, then it had been at Overlord’s orders. It would not be mercy, but in order to hurt him all the more deeply. He kept his optics offline and ran a rapid internal diagnostic. What had been done to him? 

His frame returned no error signals, merely signaling that he had recently undergone a significant circuitry refit, that there were no active areas of damage, and that self-repair was working away at returning him to full physical health. It was… highly suspicious. 

What was the last thing his memory had encoded? Part of him did not even want to look back at the events of the recent past, but he forced that fear aside ruthlessly. He had to know. He had to be prepared for whatever was coming. There had been… everything with the Justice Division. He did flinch away from those files, refusing to open them other than to confirm their presence. And then after that… Nickel, and the horror of her medical attention, briefly. Then he had been left alone. Even Overlord had gone. He had… cleaned himself up in the washracks. Recharged there, very briefly. Overlord had returned, been preparing to torture him again in some fashion, and then he had left slip the one vital piece of information that Megatron had been waiting to hear. Deathsaurus and his soldiers had left the ship. Returned to their Warworld. There were no innocents left on board, only the monsters. 

Megatron’s memory files became less concrete after that. He had been waiting to reach out for an event horizon, a black hole he had been linked to via the mess of his internal anatomy, left behind after Shockwave had turned him into a gateway to the Dead Universe. He had reached for it, and the energy that had been unleashed seemed to have interfered with encoding the memories. Things became degraded and fragmentory. He remembered damaging Overlord… but he did not remember seeing him go offline. He had no idea what had happened between hanging in chains on board the  _ Peaceful Tyranny _ and this present moment. 

Was it possible that he had failed? That the link to the black hole had given out before the job was done? 

Surely if that was the case, he would not have woken up like this. Overlord would have wanted to punish him for his daring immediately, deeply and painfully. He would not have had Nickel refit him first - and hadn’t she protested there was no point in doing so yet? 

No. Whatever had happened, it couldn’t be that. 

So why was he even online in the first place? The black hole should have devoured him along with the  _ Peaceful Tyranny _ and everyone on it. 

Megatron gave in to the inevitable, and onlined his optics. He was in a medbay, that much was clear immediately. It appeared small but well stocked, and he seemed to be alone. There was another medical slab, but no other patient. The low hum of a monitor keeping tabs on his vitals was the only detectible sound. He was not restrained. He started to get up, and the door in the far wall hissed open. Ratchet stepped through. 

Megatron had to reset his optics. Ratchet? His presence seemed too unlikely to credit. The last he’d heard, Ratchet had still been searching for Drift - though even if he had never left the  _ Lost Light _ this would still be impossible. What was going on here?

“Don’t move until I’ve checked you over,” Ratchet said, advancing with his usual severe manner. That at least rang true. “You’ve been through a lot.”

Megatron chose his words carefully. He could not trust the evidence of his own sensors. For a moment a wild idea came into his processor, that this could all be some grand trick that Overlord was playing on him, but he was able to shunt it out of his evaluation matrix without much effort.  _ That _ was simple paranoia talking. Nothing about the concept was the least bit plausible - Overlord didn’t have the patience for such a gambit, wouldn’t have chosen something so hard to believe even if he had, and couldn’t possibly frame some mech up to look so exactly like Ratchet. 

“Where am I?” he settled for asking. 

“Back on the Necrobot’s planet,” Ratchet told him, coming over and checking the monitor he was hooked up to. Then he reached for the medical port on Megatron’s forearm. The slight twitch, the flinch away, was automatic. Ratchet stopped moving at once in response. 

Megatron grit his dentae together and forced the port cover to slide back, offering it out to Ratchet. He would not acknowledge what had just happened. It was… a temporary issue. That was all. Ratchet gave him an assessing look, but wisely decided not to make something of it. He hooked in. 

Megatron braced for the sensation of another mech in his system, but thankfully Ratchet did not feel anything like Nickel. His presence was entirely different. No errant memory files were prompted to play, and Megatron could simply lie back on the medical berth and let Ratchet check him over. 

“The repairs have integrated just fine,” Ratchet told him, withdrawing. “You’re not exactly 100% yet physically, but give it a few decacycles. You’ll be refueling on medical grade for the next while, of course.”

“Is that permitted under the terms of my parole?” Megatron asked. He still didn’t understand how he had gotten here. There was a sense of the surreal to everything. He felt as though he was looking at the world through a film of plastic, that things were and were not real. Could this all be a dream? The last flarings of a dying processor?

Why would his processor choose  _ this _ , of all things, to create if that were so?

It all  _ seemed  _ real. Better to act as though it was. So then, how much did Ratchet know about what had happened to him? Was he aware of… of what Overlord had done to him? Aside from simple torture. Surely he mus bet. A medic could not have missed the specifics of the damage done to his frame. 

“Medical treatment is  _ my _ responsibility,” Ratchet said, scowling. “If I say you need medical grade energon, then you’re going to get it.”

Megatron looked away. He forced himself to ask the other question. “How did I get here?”  _ How did I escape _ , as it might otherwise be worded. 

“You can thank Rodimus and Brainstorm for that,” Ratchet told him. “As to the details, I don’t know them. You’ll have to speak to them - and I don’t doubt Rodimus will be eager to see you once he hears you’re out of stasis.”

Megatron snorted. That statement didn’t help dispel the unreal feeling any. “Rodimus has never been eager to see me.”

“Things change,” Ratchet said, mysterious and unhelpful. There was a moment of silence which drew out awkwardly before Ratchet spoke again. “So. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” Megatron asked, optics narrowing. Yes, Ratchet knew. 

“About… everything.” Ratchet gestured. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, or push you when you aren’t ready, but you’ve just come back from something that any mech would find traumatic…”

“No,” Megatron said, cutting him off. “I  _ don’t _ want to talk about it.” Let that be enough. Let Ratchet not push. His vocaliser sent him a spurt of errors, a discomfort aching through his neck components. The idea of even saying out loud anything that had happened over the last three megacycles - had it really only been so short a time? It felt like longer. 

He shouldn’t have been affected by it all so strongly, when it was such a brief period. What was his suffering compared to the hundreds of prisoners of war, on both sides, who had been tormented by their captors far longer? What was it compared to the mechs Overlord had as his toys on Garrus-9? It had happened, it had been awful, terrible, yes, but now it was  _ over _ . Couldn’t he take comfort in  _ that _ ?

It didn’t feel like it was over. Megatron could feel subroutines running in the back of his processor, battle-ready, on edge. It was a ruthless anticipation, constantly waiting for the next horror, for this dream of escape to shatter, to end up right back where he had been. 

“All right, all right,” Ratchet said, holding up his servos in a gesture to illustrate he was backing off. “Like I said, pressuring you about it is the last thing you need right now. You’ve only just woken up from stasis. You’re still getting your bearings.”

Good. That was… good. 

“You’ll want answers I expect, and I’m not the one that can give them to you,” Ratchet continued. “You’re well enough to go and speak to Rodimus about that, at least. After that, there’s a good number of mechs around here who’ll be happy to see you safe and back with us.”

Megatron had to reset his optics at that, and his audials as well. “Really? Happy to see me?” Unlikely. As one of the Captains of the  _ Lost Light _ he had been grudgingly obeyed, and treated with the kind of respect that was fear dressed up by another name, but after being the cause of both the mutiny and marooning, plus essentially bringing Tarn and his followers down on their helms, he would have imagined they might have been relieved to finally see the back of him. 

Not Ravage, of course. Ravage would have mourned him. Would be glad to see him now. But the rest? 

“You did save all their sparks by pulling that sacrifical ploy,” Ratchet told him. “Mine and Drift’s too, given we came back at just the wrong time, and would have been just as dead as everyone else. We’re not a bunch of ungrateful boors.”

“Tarn was my problem,” Megatron said. “None of you should have been involved in the first place.”

Ratchet snorted. “Remember the other  _ Lost Light _ ? The quantum double? The DJD didn’t mind slaughtering everyone on board  _ that _ ship, and I don’t recall you being involved then.”

Megatron had to concede the point - he couldn’t think of a good enough counter right now. His processor felt sluggish - he was tired even though he’d just been in stasis. Undergoing repairs was not the same as good-quality recharge though. 

“I’m releasing you from medbay - for now,” Ratchet said. “ _ However _ I will remind you that Rung is  _ also _ on this planet with us, and given that most of his patients are light-years away by now, he’s going to have a lot of open appointment slots. If you change your mind about that whole  _ talking _ thing.”

Megatron grunted an acknowledgement, not trusting his vocaliser or even what sort of response might come out of him. Talking to Rung about the cause had been bad enough. He hadn’t trusted him enough to speak the unvarnished truth, too rough for poor Autobot audials. He  _ certainly  _ didn’t trust him enough to talk about… about rape. 

He could speak that word in the privacy of his own processor. He was much less sure he could do so to a listening mech. 

“I’ll let Rodimus know you want to talk to him about the rescue,” Ratchet said. “Assuming you want me to?”

“Yes, thank you.” There were answers he needed.

\---

Rodimus was as exhaustingly full of energy as ever. He bounced into the room and over to Megatron with his arms spread as though he was intending to go for a hug, though he pulled back sharply at what must have been showing in Megatron’s expression. He did not  _ embrace _ other mechs even at the best of times. Rodimus did appear genuinely happy to see him though, much as Ratchet had claimed, and that did surprise him given how they had parted such a short time ago.

“So,” Rodimus said, a little awkward now that the initial excitement was starting to subside. “Back on your pedes again. All repaired. How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Megatron replied, a sense of impatience rising. He could sense a delicacy in the way that Rodimus was standing just a little further away than he usually would that he didn’t like. Did Rodimus imagine he could be perceived as threatening? His helm only came up to Megatron’s chest. “What exactly did you do?”

“Well ‘thank you for the rescue Rodimus’,” Rodimus said, bristling slightly. “Why are you saying it like we did something wrong?”

“That’s… not what I meant to imply.” Megatron still had no idea  _ how _ Rodimus had managed to effect his rescue, so expecting him to offer thanks was a little premature. Perhaps it was his co-Captain’s insecurity playing up again. It was something that became obvious about him once you got to know him at all well. 

“No, I…” Rodimus relaxed again. “You’re right, it must be real weird waking up in a medbay after, y’know, all that, without knowing how you got there. It wasn’t really me anyway - Brainstorm did all of the work with the portal, and tracking down your energy signal based on what Ravage said about the black hole…” He shrugged. “Yeah, all I did was volunteer to be the one to go through it and pull you back.”

So Ravage had been spilling his secrets? Given the outcome, he could hardly be angry about that. The explanation was sparse, but made as much sense as he imagined it was going to, given Brainstorm’s frequent mangling of the laws of the universe. 

“How long were you working on this?” he asked, curious. The idea of rescue had never even occurred to him. Was that simply because he hadn’t imagined anyone left behind, now safe, would care? 

“Not long,” Rodimus said. “We started as soon as we found out you were still alive.”

Megatron’s optics narrowed. There was something dangerous hiding behind those words, something his subconscious processing had identified, but which had yet to percolate up to the conscious level. “So you did think I was dead.” Which he had imagined they were likely to. 

Rodimus looked guilty. “We shouldn’t have,” he said. “ _ I _ shouldn’t have. It makes sense that Tarn would want to take his time. That he wouldn’t want everything to be over with right away. If we had just thought about that earlier, any of us, then we could have got you out sooner and…” He trailed off. 

“ _ How _ did you find out I was still alive?” Megatron asked, some dull, creeping dread starting to rise in his spark. 

Rodimus didn’t want to answer the question. He looked away under the intensity of Megatron’s gaze. After a few moments of silence though, he broke and said, “There was a recording.”

Megatron understood at once, and it was just what he had feared. That last, worst series of tortures and violations, when Overlord had called in Tarn and the rest of the DJD and allowed them free rein, when he had been blindfolded but still able to hear the buzz of the camera drones watching it all… Overlord had told him what he was doing. Tarn had made a  _ speech _ about it. He had known at the time that others would see it but he had been protected and insulated by the knowledge that he would never have to face any of the consequences of that - he was expecting to die at some point not far in the future from that moment. 

Now he was here. Alive. Standing in front of Rodimus who had  _ seen _ … 

He wanted to say something, ask him just how much of the video he had watched, but he could not force his vocaliser to activate. Rodimus was not looking at him directly, and his thoughts were well hidden behind impassive faceplates. 

There was a burning, nauseating sense of humiliation spreading beneath Megatron’s plating. The difference between the bare intellectual acknowledgement that others would see him so helpless, and the reality of this experience was its own agony. It wouldn’t just be Rodimus. A vast, long future spread out in front of him, now that he was ‘ _ safe _ ’, a future where he would have to interact with other mechs who had watched that recording. 

He wasn’t sure he could bear it. 

“The others here don’t know,” Rodimus said, words tumbling out. “Access to the Interlink here is limited, and I think Brainstorm and I were the only ones. I’ve let them know you’re alive, that we managed to get you out, but they didn’t see it. I guess it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to think about the kind of things the DJD could do to someone, but... “

“Thank you.” Megatron managed to say that much, and he meant it. It was a relief to know that at least here he would not have to deal with the weight of knowing gazes on him. At least for now. He knew how poisonous curiosity could be. Even mechs who thought themselves moral would still be tempted into seeking a recording like that out once they heard that it existed. 

He was Megatron, after all. Who would not  _ wonder _ . 

“Ravage will want to see you too,” Rodimus said. “And everyone else. I thought we could have a party maybe - just a small one! I know you wouldn’t want us to make a big fuss.”

Megatron wasn’t sure he was ready to interact with the members of his crew yet. Three megacycles, and his whole world had changed. That didn’t seem right, and yet the line drawn between before and after could not have been more stark. He vented out. He would have to show his faceplates at some point. He might as well get it over with. 

There was another question that had been gnawing at him though, one that had almost been subsumed beneath the sudden pain of thinking about that  _ recording _ . 

“Rodimus… how sure are you that Overlord and the others are dead?” He had been snatched away before the black hole had finished doing its job, after all. It should not have mattered at that point. He was almost certain he had established the wormhole sufficiently for it to have become self-sustaining. It should have continued to consume the matter around it until nothing but the empty vacuum of space remained. 

“I… don’t know,” Rodimus admitted. “It’s not like we could go back to check. I don’t even know  _ exactly _ what it was you were doing when I found you, other than it was kind of terrifying.”

Megatron cycled air in and out through his vents, trying to keep himself calm. He  _ needed _ to know. He  _ needed _ to be sure. “We need to go back there,” he said. 

“Easier said than done,” Rodimus protested. “We’re still stuck on this planet. We commed for help after the DJD left, and got word back that someone’s going to come and pick us up, but that doesn’t give us a timeline. Getaway has the  _ Lost Light! _ ” He said that last with an uncharacteristic venom. 

Megatron understood revenge. It was a very Decepticon concept, because they had all known so little justice in their lives. The thought was rather ironic now. Hadn’t that been some part of his motivation in creating the Justice Division, amongst all the other reasons that had  _ seemed _ good at the time? What a joke that had become. 

“We  _ will _ get your ship back,” Megatron promised him. “But it is only ensuring all of our safety to make sure that I was successful in destroying the  _ Peaceful Tyranny _ .”

“I get that,” Rodimus said, and dragged his servos down over his faceplates. “Oh, what a mess! I thought the hard part was over!”

It was only just beginning, Megatron thought morosely. 

“So, do you want to have the party now?” Rodimus asked him, with a certain forced cheerfulness. “Or… should it maybe wait just a little longer?”

Megatron grabbed on to the prospect of respite, however brief. “I think I need to catch up on some recharge first,” he said. “Perhaps later.”

“Okay, sure,” Rodimus said. His smile was bright and not quite real. What must he think of him now? Was it pity? Disgust? The doubt clawed away at Megatron’s internals. “See you then.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Megatron's stubborn state of denial continues, but he has more friends than he knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happily I managed to get this finished before another period of time without internet access, so have another chapter!

Ever since he had woken up somewhere very far from the mines, Terminus had been acting cautiously. He didn’t know the mechs around him, and he wasn’t sure he could trust them. Not in a general sense, as they seemed well-meaning enough, but they had their own problems and their own interests. He didn’t trust them not to shunt him aside as unnecessary and surplus to requirements. 

The last thing Terminus remembered before all of this, he had been about to go offline. That had been happening for a while, in a slow creep of growing frame damage, minor injuries turning into something more serious, and then the rampant rust infection that had been gradually taking his legs to pieces. He had been prepared for the day his spark snuffed out, no matter how carefully Megatron tried to shelter it with his care. This though, had been something different. A mining accident, perhaps. Some kind of chain reaction in the unstable nucleon ores they had been mining on Messatine at the time. 

The evacuation klaxon had been blaring in his audials, and his only thought - aside from fearing from Megatron’s safety - had been that at least this way it would be quick. At least he might die with some dignity, rather than starvation and rust. 

Then…. Someone had picked him up. His processor had been slipping towards stasis at the time, and he had thought it was Megatron, although the limbs were too thin for that. After that, a long nothing. The emptiness of stasis, without thought, without dream. Then, stumbling awake into a bright light, sensors rebooting and a helping servo bringing him up and out of the pod he had been lying in. 

Someone had repaired him. Terminus couldn’t see any reason why anyone would care to, or to fish him out of a mine on the edge of explosive collapse for that matter. He was a low caste cold-constructed miner. The parts that had been used to fix him had to have more value than he did. This place surely couldn’t have been so hard up for workers with his skills that they had needed to fetch one from out of time itself - because it had been a  _ long _ time. His chronometer worked just fine - the rust hadn’t made it  _ that _ far. Millions of years had passed. 

He supposed Megatron was probably long offline by now. The life expectancy of miners had never been impressive. 

The thought hurt, just as it had when he’d been lying there wondering if Megatron had gotten out with the rest of the evacuation. It might have been a long time externally, but to him, it was mere megacycles ago that he’d last seen his bright-opticed visionary, his green-sparked, impossible lover who thought too deeply and too hard for the place the Functionalists would have them take in the world. 

What had Megatron’s fate been? The Functionalists had already been too close for comfort. Terminus had lived long enough and been wily enough to build up contacts on every moon and planet he’d ever been assigned to - he’d sent them Megatron’s writings carved into the very struts and platings of the dead, knowing that they  _ had  _ to be seen by others like him who knew that the way of things was wrong. He heard whispers back -  _ something _ had been building, but low-caste mechs were not the only ones who could listen to rumours. There had been enforcers, searching for the source. Questions. 

Had Megatron managed to keep his helm down and stay out of their way? Had his eventual offlining come in the usual way of their trade via accident or obsolescence, or sooner and sharper, his questioning spark stomped out by the violent boot of the state. 

Terminus could ask, perhaps, if these strangers ever had any time for him. It would be stretching belief, for any memories of the writings of an obscure thinker and poet would surely have long since been lost to information creep after four million years and more, but if there was the slightest chance that one of them knew Megatron’s fate… 

Terminus vented out. There was not much to do, here in this strange future. There had been other mechs like him, placed carefully away in stasis pods in this fortress, who had been woken up by the strangers. After coming to consciousness and being told some sparse facts about where they were: a planet with no real name other than a galactic numerical designation; the name of the mech who had brought them here and repaired their injuries: the Necrobot, also known as Censere, now offline himself; and what had happened to them: snatched away from their lives by some manner of time travelling device, to spare them from death. Then they had been left to their own devices. 

The several dozen of them had ended up holing themselves up in one wing of the large fortress, and trying to figure out what to do next. There was no way to contact the wider galaxy, and no transport off this planet yet either. There was not a mech among them who wasn’t aching for news of events on Cybertron, desperate to know what had happened during the time they had missed. Terminus had asked a few questions of the others, although they all seemed suspicious of him for some reason, and had managed to work out that he was probably one of the oldest there - not in terms of the age of his frame, but in  _ when _ he came from. 

There had been some kind of war, he had gathered that much. There had been wars before on Cybertron, and there certainly would be again. This one seemed to have been particularly bad though. He had noticed at least half of the mechs in the group wearing badges, either a red face which he felt he ought to recognise, or an unfamiliar purple mask, a sharp ‘v’ of an insignia. The two groups hated each other, though none had come to blows yet after being informed that the war they had been fighting was over. The fact that Terminus did not have such an emblem might be why neither side seemed to trust him. 

None of them would answer his questions about what the war had been about, why it had started. They did not seem to believe he was sincere, as though it was impossible that he could not already know. Engines growled, backs were turned, or fists were raised. Terminus had quickly stopped asking. 

He was left to his own devices, waiting, wandering around and exploring when the boredom got too much. 

As he was wandering now. The long corridors were not much like the mines, but it was enough to settle something in him, as was the simple movement. He had not been constructed to sit idle, but to work, and work hard. Yes it was without choice, an unfair system, but he missed the sense of purpose. 

Terminus rounded a corner and almost collided with one of the strangers, the mechs who had woken them all up. The mech was a red and white minibot, barely coming up above Terminus’ waist. He looked up at him, raised his servos, and gave an awkward laugh. 

“Hey, sorry, didn’t see you there.” 

Terminus felt that as the larger mech, he ought to be the one apologising, but he couldn’t deny that the minibot had been striding along fast without looking where he was going. 

“Why are you in such a hurry?” he asked, desperate for some conversation at this point. At least they’d had that one thing in the mines, the pleasure of each other’s company, shared camaraderie to ease the pain and toil. 

The smaller mech gave him a nervous smile. “Rodimus - our… or, one of our, Captains. He wants everyone to get together to plan a party.”

“You have something to celebrate?” Perhaps a ship had arrived to get them all of this world, and they’d simply failed to mention it to any of the sleepers? He couldn’t imagine much else in the way of good news here. 

“Yeah,” the minibot replied emphatically. “Megatron’s back! He wasn’t dead after all!”

Terminus felt his frame lock up, his spark leaping inside its chamber in a sudden frenzy. He managed to force his vocaliser to activate - surely it was just a coincidence of a name, but it was not a common one and particularly not when glyphed in  _ that _ particular way, the ‘tron’ from ‘neutron’ so similar to, yet distinct from, ‘megaton’, the ordnance glyph. 

“Megatron?” he asked. “I knew a mech by that name once.”

The minibot gave him a very strange look. “Yeah, you and everybody else in the galaxy.”

Terminus was feeling more and more confused, unmoored from reality - although that sensation was hardly new these past couple of megacycles since being woken from stasis. “Why would… no,” he corrected himself. “That’s not important. I knew a Megatron in the mines, a very long time ago - the time I’m from. Before this war that no one will tell me about. I know it must be almost impossible for your Megatron to be the same mech, but if there’s even the slightest chance that he is…”

The odd look had changed - still skeptical, still puzzled, but also now calculating. Terminus got the feeling he was finally being taken seriously. 

“He’s in the medbay still right now,” the little mech said slowly. “And I don’t know when he’ll be up to visitors. Personally I don’t think he’s even going to want this party Rodimus seems so dead set on holding - but maybe I could pass on your name and see what he says?”

“I would be very grateful. My name is Terminus.”

\----

Ravage did not trust these Autobots to keep him properly informed about Megatron’s recovery, and so he had settled for the next best thing - keeping a close optic on Rodimus, and observing what he did. So, when Rodimus left his berth where he had been pacing for the last few cycles and headed towards the medbay, Ravage was there waiting and ready to follow him. 

The medbay door slid shut too fast for him to creep in behind when Rodimus entered, and Ravage was well aware that Ratchet ran frequent scans inside the room which were tuned to pick up even his stealthy frame, so he did not bother to try and find a way inside. The mere fact that Rodimus had been called for was enough to let him know that Megatron must have woken from medical stasis, which itself meant that his repairs must be complete. Ratchet would have kept him under otherwise. 

Physical repair was one thing. Megatron’s mental state was another. Ravage would not feel satisfied until he had a chance to see that for himself as well. He normally felt no concern over eavesdropping on conversations no matter how private - that was simply a spy’s role - but… not this time. He might be able to get close enough through a vent to overhear, but he would not. Megatron wouldn’t appreciate it. He could wait. 

He found a quiet, unobserved place to curl up. After a while, Rodimus left the medbay again, and not long afterwards Megatron followed him out. Ravage stood and padded after him, keen optics raking over his frame, auditory and olfactory sensors dialled to their highest settings in an attempt to find anything obviously wrong. 

Megatron smelled stressed - that was understandable. He stalked through the corridors of the fortress as though he was hunting, or being hunted. Ravage could hear the soft hum of hydraulics ready to activate, of cables under strain. Tense and ready for a fight. 

Megatron was headed for his room, the same one he had claimed when they first retreated here, after Tarn’s sunset deadline, before he had chosen to act like a martyr. Should Ravage make his presence known? Did Megatron want to talk to him - talk to  _ anyone _ \- yet? Or would he be something else for an overtaxed processor to deal with? 

Ravage turned, intending to slip away, but as he did so Megatron said, in a voice intended to carry, “Where do you think  _ you’re _ going?”

Ravage stilled, then emerged from the shadows. “You don’t always know that I’m there,” he said, although indeed detecting him at all was beyond the abilities of most mechs. Megatron knew him well though. 

Megatron grunted, acknowledging and dismissing his statement all at once. “It’s… good to see you again,” he said, a little hesitantly. It was more affection than they usually showed each other. Decepticons did not need soft words to show each other that they cared. 

“Good to see  _ you _ didn’t succeed in getting yourself offlined,” Ravage replied, tone wry to show he didn’t mean it as genuine criticism. “Is there anything you need?” That last, he said softly. It had the ring of motto to it, the old familiar question that was asked of any captured Decepticon who had been returned to the fold. It held a lot of meanings, not only asking of repairs, of refueling, of wanting space and rest and respite and conversation and silence and all the other things, but at its most base, ‘Is there anyone you need killed?’

“They’re already dead,” Megatron told him, then vented out. “They  _ should _ be dead,” he corrected. “Without confirmation, I cannot be sure.”

Ravage’s claws dug into the deckplating. “If not, revenge shall be yours,” he promised. “I wish I had come with you to meet Tarn. Perhaps if I had…”

“Overlord would have killed you,” Megatron said seriously. “That would not have made the experience any better - at least I knew everyone else was safe.”

“Or I could have gone for help,” Ravage said. “Then we would have known earlier that you were still alive…”

“Rodimus is already well established in blaming himself,” Megatron told him. “I will not have you doing so as well.”

“It’s not blame,” Ravage lied. “It’s tactical analysis. Debriefing.”

Megatron snorted - at least he could still find some sense of humour, which Ravage thought was a good sign. “I made the choice to go out there,” he said. “Under the circumstances, I’m grateful to be rescued at all.” There was something… not quite right about the way he said that. Something that made Ravage a little uneasy, but he could not identify anything solid that would bear further questions. 

“You know I’m with you, don’t you?” he said, it suddenly seeming very important than Megatron be certain of that. “No matter that red badge on your chest right now - you have my support.” 

Megatron smiled, but even so it still felt as though there was some distance between them. “Thank you Ravage,” he said, “but I’m fine. I don’t require anything at the moment - other than some recharge in the near future.”

Ravage felt his circuits heat in shame. Here he was, keeping his friend and leader from his berth, simply to assuage his own worries and concerns. Had Rodimus done the same, he wondered? Made this situation more about him and his own guilt than about Megatron’s needs? Ravage understood why it was easier to do that, because guilt implied a level of control over the situation. Belief that if they had made smarter choices they could have influenced the situation in some way - better to the spark than the idea that nothing anyone could have done would have been enough against Tarn and Overlord and the DJD… 

“Do you want company?” Ravage asked, sure that he would be refused but needing to ask anyway. He had stood as a silent guardian in Megatron’s quarters before, on the  _ Lost Light _ , but the circumstances had been far different. 

“No,” Megatron replied, as he’d thought. “Although thank you for the offer. I will see you later - perhaps at this  _ party _ Rodimus plans on holding.”

Ravage’s audials went tight back against his helm. “This  _ what _ ?” 

Megatron nodded, sharing Ravage’s look of disbelief. “A welcome home party,” he explained. “Where Rodimus is concerned, I feel it’s simply better to let him run with his ideas, otherwise he’d only come up with something worse.”

Ravage growled - had Rodimus learned so little about Megatron’s preferences during their time as co-Captains? Yes, he certainly  _ would _ be there so that Megatron would have someone to complain to, and so he could chase off any over-eager Autobot  _ well-wishers _ . 

“I shall see you there,” he promised, and knew Megatron understood exactly what he meant. 

\----

Megatron shut the door of his room with a long exhale through his vents. It had been satisfying to speak to Ravage again, but it hadn’t done enough to quiet his over-eager subsystems that were still dialled up for combat. After Rodimus’ visit Ratchet had pronounced him well enough to leave his medbay, so he knew that the cause was nothing physical. He  _ should _ have been in command of his own processes. Should have been able to shut off these chains of code that had his sensors tuned to their most acute settings, that had low-level energy pulsing throughout his frame ready for action… but he could not. 

His  _ processor _ felt tired, and ready to recharge, but the rest of him… Would his frame even allow him to rest?

For a moment Megatron wondered whether he should have taken Ravage up on his offer. They had shared quarters before, and it had been reassuring to know there was a Decepticon nearby, on a ship packed full of Autobots. It shouldn’t have been - he was supposed to be an Autobot now too, but for all their disagreements Ravage wanted no harm to come to him, which was more than could be said of most of the  _ Lost Light’s  _ crew. The mutiny had proved it, but he had already known they hated him. 

Not without good reason. 

The reason Megatron had refused Ravage’s offer though was simply that he did not trust what his recharge was going to be like. He had recharged fitfully on board the  _ Peaceful Tyranny _ as a captive, often forced to share a berth with Overlord whilst doing so. He had been too wounded and exhausted for dreams then, and he was afraid of them now. Of what he might see as his processor reset itself, categorised and archived recent events. 

He could cope with it. He would have to. That didn’t mean he wanted anyone else to see it, if he had to struggle to master his own reactions. 

Megatron lay down on the bare berth. It was honest, solid metal at least, unlike Overlord’s padded, massive berth that had easily been large enough for their two heavy frames. Perhaps that would help. He shuttered his optics and did his best to relax. He still felt slightly dazed, slightly set apart from reality around him. The sensation had started to ease as he talked to other mechs, as he had more and more evidence that this was indeed real, and yet… 

His thoughts threatened to slip back to the memory files encoded from those last three nightmare megacycles, and he ruthlessly turned away from them, forced himself to think of something, anything, else. If he allowed himself to dwell on what had been done to him even slightly, he did not know how he would react. 

Megatron distracted himself by opening a selection of memory files from the  _ Lost Light _ , of the happy times of the last few decacyles before the mutiny, until he felt recharge starting to take him. 

\----

Megatron was fighting - no,  _ sparring _ . He whirled and turned around a small space deep beneath the surface of Kaon, where the Decepticons had built their most recent base, keeping as always one step ahead of Sentinel and his enforcers. He batted aside the blade of his opponent and went in for the kill, the energon-pink paint on the edge of his own dulled sword scoring across neck cables and leaving its brilliant mark behind. 

“You aren’t really trying,” he said, to the large frame that faced him. 

“This isn’t a real fight,” Overlord sneered back, dropping his sword onto the gravel. “This is… dull.”

“You told me you wanted to train,” Megatron said, keeping his voice mild, avoiding obvious criticism. 

“I told you I wanted to  _ fight _ you,” Overlord replied, fanged dentae bared. There was a brightness behind his optics, and something in Megatron stirred uneasily in response. “Like we used to. Fight me  _ properly _ Megatron.”

“Our medics have better things to do now than repair gladiators,” Megatron replied, patience rapidly running out. 

Overlord’s optics narrowed, and then he lunged. Megatron met his attack, twisted, and bore them both down to the floor of the makeshift arena. They wrestled, strength against strength. Familiar, as it had been eight times before over vorns and longer, over their careers before Megatron had the shanix and the followers to leave all that behind him and devote his time to the cause… 

The outcome was never in doubt, in Megatron’s mind. If it had been, he would not have agreed to even the training bout. Once again Megatron was victorious, pinning Overlord down in a hold he would have to break his own struts to wriggle free of. Heat from the hard-worked frames shimmered up between them. Megatron could see Overlord’s optics, see the fire behind them, the rage. 

“Fine,” Overlord spat, and slid his modesty panel aside. 

Megatron let go immediately and stepped away. He shook his helm, a sudden panicked feeling rising. “We’re not in the arena anymore,” he said. “That… that is not how things work any longer. I don’t want that from you.”

Overlord’s expression twisted. Megatron could not read it. The walls of the arena seemed to be closing in around him - his vents came fast and hot, as though the air itself was not enough to cool him. Overlord stood up, and stalked forwards - there was something off-kilter here. Some part of Megatron shouted that this was not what had happened. That the memory file was wrong, corrupted. In a haze, he became aware that this was a dream, that he was deep in recharge… but Overlord had already grabbed him, fastened servos around his wrists and swept his legs out from under him, bearing him down to the gravel beneath. 

Anger and lust were mixed together in Overlord’s expression as he loomed over him. 

“Don’t you want that?” he asked. “Don’t you want revenge? I had mine.”

“Let go of me,” Megatron said, hating that his voice sounded so weak, trying to make himself fight back. He couldn’t move. Was that the dream, or was that himself? 

“Where has your ruthlessness gone?” Overlord asked him, a servo caressing the side of Megatron’s faceplates. “Where is your strength? You don’t have the courage to do anything. You haven’t even killed me.” Megatron reset his optics, and a different Overlord was crouched over him, one with plating stripped away in rough and random patterns, one with struts and protoform showing, one optic gone, green spark-light playing out from a crack in his chest. Ravaged by the singularity, and yet somehow still online. 

“Weak,” Overlord told him. “Pathetic. You deserved everything we did to you.”

Megatron came up out of recharge with his engine roaring, half-falling off the berth in his sudden need to  _ get away _ , to  _ fight _ . His fist hit the wall next to his berth with a clang of metal on metal that cut through the panic. He started to regain mastery over himself again. Sensors scanned the room - he was alone. There was no evidence of movement from outside either. He had not been heard. 

He started, very slightly, to relax. 

It had not been the kind of unpleasant dream he had been expecting. It hadn’t been a reliving of recent events, but based on a memory file millions of years old. After the arena, in the early days of the cause. He  _ had  _ been thinking more of that time recently, trying to work out where it had all gone wrong. Welcoming Overlord into their ranks had to have been part of that rot, that change from righteousness to, at some point, destruction for its own sake. Even so he did not know why his processor had chosen  _ that _ , of all things. 

Megatron put his backstrut against the wall, and tried to calm himself. He felt… weak. His frame was wounded, and it had never been as strong as some of the other ones after what Shockwave had done, even before the Fool’s Energon. Would he feel better once he began refueling with medical grade? He simply… did not feel safe right now. Defenceless. His servos ached for a weapon. 

There might be something he could do about that. His processor fixed on the idea, and then could not let go of it. He had generally scorned the claws and fangs some of his soldiers were so proud of as unnecessary next to the sheer physical power of his own frame, but now… If Ratchet could be persuaded… 

He could be persuasive. It was one of his more famous qualities. 

**Author's Note:**

> My inconsistent access to the internet continues, so I'm not sure what the update schedule for this will be like.


End file.
